Bearing Witness
by Graceful Bard
Summary: During the 2011 London riots, Dean remembers the war.


Dean hadn't lived in London since he'd left home to go on the run at seventeen. He liked to draw and paint his surroundings, and London had too much movement and too many gray tones for casual sketches. However, his two half sisters lived there, Lizzy in Camden Town with her well-off fiancé, and Olivia in the outskirts with her husband and baby.

When Dean's mother called him to tell him about the riots, he happened to be between commissions. So he told his mother, who had never ceased believing that his magic could solve any problem, that he would go to London to make sure his sisters were all right. He told Lizzy and Olivia, who understood perfectly well that there was little he could do to keep them safe, that he was coming for a job.

That was less of a lie, at any rate. He intended to paint in London – he just wasn't going to be paid for it.

Dean settled into his seat on the train and pulled his crumpled newspaper out of his bag. He would have to save the _Daily Prophet_ for later, and he was more interested in the Muggle news at the moment, anyway.

_Riots in London abated somewhat on Wednesday, but civil unrest spread to other cities in Britain as David Cameron sought to restore order by deploying thousands of extra police in London._

Dean frowned. He wasn't that up to date on Muggle politics, but he was pretty sure that Lizzy hated David Cameron passionately. However, that didn't tell him anything, really – Lizzy did everything passionately. What Dean wanted to know is if the Muggles were stuck with a Cornelius Fudge.

He looked down at his paper again.

"_For me, the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing I have spoken about for years," Cameron said. "It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society."_

'_There will be discussions about underlying causes. I don't agree with Cameron when he says it is simple. It is not. It is very complex," Harriet Harman, a leading member of the opposition Labour party, said._

Was Cameron trying to save face but doing the right things, or was he trying to cover-up the truth? Dean knew that Muggle newspapers could not be controlled as easily as the _Daily Prophet_ had been during the war, but freedom did not equal good reporting, and recent events with Rupert Murdock had not made Dean confident about the integrity of the Muggle press.

Dean returned the newspaper to his bag and pulled out a well-worn book. It was called _Waltzing Matilda_, and Dean hadn't understood why until Seamus had made him listen to a sad Australian war ballad.

Dean thumbed through the book, pausing occasionally to look over familiar lines. He had read all the poems many times, but sometimes he felt he needed to revisit them.

Seamus had written the book a decade ago – although, of course, he'd been writing the poems for years before that – and Dean still had trouble believing that the funny, irreverent boy who had been his best mate at school had grown into a great writer. Seamus was the Wizarding world's Wilfred Owen, and his histories of the war were internationally famous. (Although Seamus claimed that that was because he was the only writer who Harry Potter and the other war heroes had been willing to talk to.)

Dean had been the better student at school, and also a better athlete, a better artist, and, although neither of them ever mentioned it, better looking. But Dean knew now that Seamus was the braver one. Dean had not even been able to face Andromeda Tonks after the war, to tell her how much he'd liked and appreciated her husband while they'd been on the run together. Seamus had faced the world when he exposed his soul with _Waltzing Matilda_ and his past with his first history book, _Dumbledore's Army_.

Dean found the poem he was looking for on page thirty-six. It was untitled, like all of Seamus' poems, but Dean recognized it by the small but visible coffee stain on the top right corner of the page.

_I read it in the paper_

_So I know it must be true_

_My leaders wouldn't lie to me_

_So the liar, then, is you_

_Why would you try to tell us_

_Things we do not want to hear?_

_We like our bright and peaceful world_

_Don't tell us danger's near_

_You can bring us back a body_

_But foul play we will deny_

_You can try to sway the public_

_And we will tell them that you lie_

_Maybe you will suffer more_

_Because we refused to see the light_

_But we do not care for truth or lives_

_We care for glory, fame, and might_

_I read it in the paper_

_So I know it must be true_

_My leaders wouldn't lie to me_

_So the liar, then, is you_

Seamus' words were powerful as always, reminding Dean of the frustration and fear of the war and the betrayal he had felt at the actions of the _Daily Prophet _and the Ministry. Seamus had felt even more let down – after all, his mother had worked for the _Prophet_, and he had really trusted that it would tell him the truth.

Dean had wondered for a long time whether it would have made a difference if Seamus had published that poem when he'd written it, in their fifth year. Probably not, on a grand scale, but maybe a few people would have read it and been convinced by it, found some of that truth which is present in art and lacking in facts. For those people, a few extra months might have been everything – time to protect themselves, to run away. Time to join the Order of the Phoenix and help everyone.

There was no way of knowing, but Dean didn't intend to let it happen again. Maybe these riots in London were just about economic uncertainty, and David Cameron was doing everything he could to keep the peace and do the right thing. But just in case, Dean would go to London and paint the truth, and he would make sure that the truth was seen.


End file.
